Vintners We Love: Celia Welch Masyczek

	“It’s one of those things everyone I know who loves food and wine has an experience of—that childhood experience of biting into the perfect peach, or a strawberry from a garden. You bite into it and it has this incredible flavor. You have to trust to know that same experience will happen [in the vineyard], even if it’s not there yet.”  Celia Welch Masyczek
	Celia Welch Masyczek

Celia Masyczek (pronounced ma-CHESS-key) is a Napa Valley-based independent winemaking consultant who makes wine for some of Napa’s most elite labels, including Scarecrow, DR Stephens, Husic, and Keever (previous credits include Silverado Vineyards and Staglin). The 2003 Scarecrow received a whopping 98 points from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, the highest score ever for a debut California wine.

Masyczek says the Parker score was great validation for the wine, “but even more so, the pedigree of the vineyard.” Even though 2003 was considered a fairly tough vintage in Napa, she always felt the Scarecrow was outstanding. The fact that the wine sold out before Parker’s score, as well as the score itself, reinforced that belief.

Ever humble, Masyczek says she tries to “put a very light thumbprint” on the wines she works with, choosing rather to “stay in the background, only enhancing the very high quality of [her clients’] estates and allowing their fruit to take center stage.”

When prodded gently to describe her style, Masyczek affirms that she likes fruit forward wines, “just pulled back from the edge of ripeness, with a level of extraction appropriate for ageability, but never so much as to obscure the individual personality of the estate.” Each vineyard and area have a unique story, so Masyczek chooses to work with wines from different appellations of Napa valley. One huge advantage, she says, is that she is not faced with all of her client's fruit ripening at the same time!

Masyczek’s father was an amateur winemaker and her mother was an aspiring chef. Realizing that professional winemaking would combine her early fascination with how flavors and aromas mesh, evolve, and combine in new ways, as well as her strengths in science and her love of the rural lifestyle, she decided to attend University of California at Davis, earning a B.S. in Fermentation Science in 1982.

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